The Turtledove. An Extract from One Fine Day, with Singing.

This is a slightly different draft of the edited version that appears in the book, One Fine Day, published by September Books

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Music was only my third love, after girls and books, but it’s a close run thing. I suspect it won’t be my last, either; grandchildren trump even music, I find. I’m unlikely to meet my great-grandchildren, but I feel sure that the love you feel for your children becomes sharper as the generations tick by. And pop music is by and for young people, so if you like pop music, you have to find out what they like. If, as I hope, my seven times great great-grandchildren discover this book, I would say to them, ‘Hello. I love you very very much. This is where we are from. I tried to be a good ancestor, in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Er… what music is cool in 2321? What should I be listening to?’

I actively listen to music for an hour or so most days, and have done for as long as I remember. There was always music on at home, and all three of my parents were accomplished singers. When it comes to music, I am Mummy’s Boy. Her Nat King Cole/Ella Fitzgerald/Sarah Vaughan collection was always on the turntable – until Birth Dad Alan came home and put on records by the Clancy Brothers and suchlike. I knew from the age of six which I preferred. One kind of music featured very cool people singing great songs in astounding voices. The other was beardy old geezers going on about pubs and Irish nationalism and stuff. One kind had great piano, swinging rhythm sections, and beautiful strings. The other had some bloke tweedling on a penny whistle. One kind had the jitterbug, the other country dancing, and you know what they say about that.

The transistor radio in the kitchen was always playing sixties pop, tuned to pirate station Radio London when Mum was in control. When Alan was home, it was the Light Programme – the tedious World Wide Family Favourites, or Sing Something Simple, even duller than it sounds. He liked ‘Inchworm’ by Burl Ives, but didn’t rate the Beatles, because hair. The Fabs were the first band I remember, doing ‘She Loves You’ on TV. And so on. Lives are marked out by pop music; mine is, anyway.

I’ve sung in dozens of bands. I joined my first band at eight. We were called the Marmites. I was in a band until 2016, when I lost my hearing. We were called The Same Tokens. I’ve sung opera, rock, and rock opera. I’ve sung in church choirs, punk bands, ska bands, pop bands, soul bands, funk bands, funk/soul bands, punk/funk bands, nu-country bands, two anarchist collective bands, a comedy band, and a high concept covers band doing Prefab Sprout songs. I’ve bellowed, crooned, and rapped. I’ve sung in duos and with a 28-piece orchestra. And in all those years, and in all those iterations, I’ve never knowingly sung a folk song. But if I’m going to stand in front of the fire at Little Park Farm, and sing a song for Thom and Elizabeth, like a precocious child singing to his indulgent grandparents, the moment has come.

In October 2019 I made a trip to Lancaster, to work for three days hosting a couple of stages at the Lancaster Music Festival. Compering festival stages suits my personality, as it’s a cross between stand-up comedy and community policing, and I’ve done a fair bit over the years. I was also in the City by the Bay to record a song. A very old traditional folk song, for which I had tried to put all my long-cherished prejudices aside. In July, the Lancaster songwriter and guitarist Stuart Anthony had come to stay with me in Presteigne to work on the arrangement for a few days; now we were recording it in his studio. It was a huge honour to work with Stuart, who writes a lot with Larry Beckett, the Californian songwriter/poet who wrote many of Tim Buckley’s lyrics, including ‘Song to the Siren’. Stuart had recorded guitar, harmonium, and a pulsing drum, and all I had to do was to try to remember how to sing. At least my deafness meant I didn’t have to stick my finger in my ear. The song is called ‘The Turtle Dove’. This is the version I sang:

Fare thee well my dear, I must be gone,

and leave you for a while.

If I roam away, I’ll come back again,

though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear,

though I roam ten thousand miles.

The sea will never run dry my dear,

nor rocks melt with the sun,

and I’ll never be false to the woman I love

till all these things be done, my dear,

till all these things be done.

Oh say don’t you see that little turtle dove,

sitting under the mulberry tree?

Hear him making a mourn for his own true love

as I shall mourn for thee, my dear,

as I shall mourn for thee.

Fair thee well my love, I must be gone,

and leave you for a while.

If I roam away, I’ll come back again,

though I roam ten thousand miles, my love,

though I roam ten thousand miles.

I adapted them slightly from one of the best-known versions, because that has the words ‘bonny lass’ in it, and I had to draw the line somewhere. I did a pop songwriter’s trick, so in the repeated first verse, I changed ‘my dear’ to ‘my love’, to add a bit of passionate emphasis.

‘The Turtledove’, also known as ‘Fare Thee Well’, or ‘Ten Thousand Miles’ is a folk standard, and has been performed by hundreds and recorded by dozens of singers over the years including Joan Baez, Mary Black, Eliza and Martin Carthy, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Marianne Faithful, June Tabor, and Alan’s favourites Burl Ives and Liam Clancy. I am straying into his world, and it makes me uncomfortable. No one knows why Alan was the way he was. He was not a cheerful Burgundian, hail-fellow-well-met kinda guy. He was a cruel, manipulative charmer. Donald Trump scared me, because he reminded me of my father. That’s how I knew Trump was dangerous and unfit for office. Most people who knew Alan; my sister, his sister, his brother, his ex-wives (all five of them), described him as sociopathic, and turning into him is my biggest fear. Still – it’s just a song. I put my hands behind my back, and take a deep breath…